lal bahadur "70......

the year 1970...........the "chandubi mahal".............pacho the mahaldar from village borbakra, panchor the phandi, bangal the kamla...........lal bahadur was captured in the jungles of kulshi at the assam - meghlaya border by four of pacho mahajan's koonkies.......he was five then and named lal bahadur after the erstwhile prime minister lal bahadur shastri.......

pacho mahajan's mahal captured many elephants, he wouldnt retain them ofcourse, they would either be sold or gifted........lal bahadur caught the eye of suresh mahajan from nearby jarugaon.......he wanted lal bahadur at any cost, but lal bahadur was priced at Rs. 5000/-. Suresh mahajan was in a dilemma, five thousand rupees it was beyond his meagre means but lal bahadur must be his............

he sold his cows @ Rs. 70/- per pair and gathered seven hundred, another thousand was garnered by selling his paddy and the rest he thought he would borrow from friends...........a feast was organised........country chickens, boiled pork slices, rice with plenty of lau pani.......around 150 people would gather for this feast after all suresh mahajan was buying an elephant......it was a big day for jarugaon.......

finally as the day dawned into a muggy morning, suresh mahajan was frantic he could only manage to borrow another thousand bucks..........lal bahadur would never be his! and the feast......the smell of pork boiling was already in the air.........laughter and thrill filled up the open spaces at his courtyard.......he had to do something; suresh left for borbakra................... a heavy heart...............pacho's mother welcomed him and he knew he had to try this last time...........he narrated his dilemma to the old lady...............and the lady decided that lal bahadur would be handed over to suresh mahajan on credit.........a credit which he cleared over several years.........

the year 2011...........suresh mahajan's courtyard............lal bahadur stands tall over the banana grooves all of 46 years, a full grown tusker with tusks shorn short by the constant pulling of heavy logs of timber..........sugarcane sticks are offered which he chews slowly...........he looks tired or maybe he is tired.......he has probably forgotten the taste of sugarcane or maybe even to chew...........suresh mahajan is in the dumps, legal logging has been banned a long time and illegal logging is now showing no returns, all his elephants are jobless...........the makhana infact succumbed last saturday..............he has to save his tusker, his favorite lal bahadur............his wife weeps in the corner, lal bahadur is not getting enough food.............how long will he last?

darjeeling............... 1993

the perfect chill in the air, a muscatel cuppa chai and the kanchenjunga..........resonance........lifes' beautiful...........the smell of the pines, of the burning dry leaves, the mist and the sun together, the medley of the evening sunrays passing through the red leaves of the solitary maple opposite das studio was enough to give me the goosebumps of my life.....coz life was good then, but was it good because of actual good good or was it because life was young then? young we were, carefree too, it surely needed youth and attitude to actually spend hours at Keventers with three friends sharing a single hot dog and a cup of expresso, admiring the googles adorned memsahibs and half pant wearing sahibs of the Tea Planters Club just opposite to the Kevs rooftop, u could do this only in darj.......this was October, autumn, season of the tourists, darj had hordes of them jostling, bargaining, awestruck at the sight of the mountains, on foot, on landrovers spilling to their ends, merging into the ocean of more tourists at the Chowrasta, "the Mall" to the hangovered brits.........the mall was the heartland of darj, u could just about do anything here....jogg, meditate, laugh, gossip, fight, ride ponies, give speeches, carry out a cleanliness drive, oogle at girls or even boys, sleep on the benches, have a picnic lunch, dance, sing songs or simply experience the changing hues of the kanchenjunga...........it was heavenly anyways............every little bit of it was heavenly, darj has to be experienced to be understood.....its pure resonance, only when u stand beneath the awesome kanchenjunga do u realise how small u actually are..........its only in darj....................that places are more important than people in your lives..........its only in darj that u walk through the mist towards the sunrays...............its only in darj..........

Brishti’s tree (The Raintree)

She was drenched

by the pouring rain………..

drunk was the rain….

And endlessly she danced

In the rain she danced ………(anonymous)

The rains lashed the skies, the thunder, the lighting………..kaalboishakhi again. The dust rose once again turning the world into a restless soul, desperately trying to match her soul with the world Brishti suddenly remembered that she was soulless; she had sold her soul to buy love.

Strange was the word that everyone used to describe her and yes she really was strange. Her friends were fascinated by clothes, cars and good food but Brishti’s fascination was trees. As a child she had loved and lived on the guava tree that grew in her courtyard. She had even slept amongst the branches, she had played “paanwala” with its leaves and suffered bites from the resident ants of the guava tree. She had always wondered out aloud as to why the red plums came from plum trees that bloomed pink flowers and the yellow plums came from the plum trees that bloomed white flowers. Her mother had hurriedly explained to her that the next darker shade of pink and white were red and yellow and that’s why. Her lunch hours in school were never spent in the canteen but she had relished the cucumber sandwiches and bananas under the fir trees with its spiny needle like leaves, she shivered even now at the mere thought of the mist covered rows of pine trees which had stood the trial and trust of time. Her first encounter with the red rhododendrons, she always felt that these flowers lost their beauty at close quarters, otherwise bewitchingly beautiful amongst the high mountains. Brishti had anyway never liked the rhododendrons – the lovely flowers always overshadowed the trees, too many songs had been written about them…..

She had forever lived another moment in time, had listened to the music of the rains, had filled her room with fresh fragrances from the Giant Magnolia tree that grew outside her window, the perfect white flowers would bloom once in two – three years but the fragrance that they left behind was enough to freshen her room till the next bloom. Her mother always cursed the Magnolia saying that the day its roots reaches the centre of our home we will all be gone, the snake tree she called it, but she too knew it was not for real, Brishti’s grandma had always used this tree as a place for discarding the stale puja flowers. After her grandma’s death, the Magnolia was shorn of its branches to the helm that she never experienced the fragrance ever again. Travelling elsewhere in another moment of time Brishti did once again see the white Magnolia flowers but it was down a hillside too far away to garner the fragrance, she had asked many a fellow passengers from the locality as to whether this tree bloomed its white flowers once in two – three years but no one knew and no one even wanted to know.

The day she sold her soul she was in another earth zone in another world ready to buy the love of a different landscape, a place as green as can be, in fact she bought the love that the trees sold to her. It was the month of “phagun” with the “sal” forests burning from its blooms and it was also the first time she had seen the “sal” trees blooming. Souls sold and love bought under the sal forests pushed Brishti into the brink of oblivion. Thereafter she lived for poetry, cinema, rhythm, adventure, romance, rain, tea, books and all other things small, inexpensive and beautiful. Whether it was Rabindra Nath Tagore’s “Bokul” tree under which someone danced to someone else’s tune on the flute or the great “Nahor” tree which provided a home for the hundreds of birds in the evenings, every little thing became a matter of perception. She still vividly remembers the story of a blind man who gave up his palatial bungalow and instead let the pond and the giant “Kadam” tree to be so that the birds did not lose their homes and the “para” children their childhood games of catching tadpoles in the pond. There was plenty that Brishti had not known like the “Koroi” tree could not be burned because it was fire resistant, she did not bother as to what made it resistant to fire but she was just fascinated by the thought that it did not burn down even in the worst of forest fires. Brishti sometimes even wondered if fire was required to create the flames, for she had now seen stretches of skylines ablaze with the red flaming flowers of the “Krishnachura trees” heralding the onset of spring – the season of youth. Somehow the rhododendron and the krishnachura flowers found themselves on the same platter of her likes and dislikes for she still thought that the flowers outshone the trees and that too many songs had been written about them.     

She continues to live in another moment in time, listens to songs on the radio, searches for music in the rains – because it just doesn’t rain like those days, raincoats are out of fashion only for this reason she feels. Her room still fills with the fragrances of the flowering tree outside her window but the frangipanis have replaced the magnolias and the fragrances too have become short termed, annual you can call them. Still life goes on………. 

The storm had passed, light clouds flirted across the blue skies along with the smooth breeze but Brishti stood still feeling the raindrops even then. The dew drops from the branches of the “shirish trees” felt more like rain, little did she realise that she was standing under the trees named after her – the rain trees. “Trees are the earth’s endless efforts to speak to the listening heavens”….said a Noble laureate poet, but Brishti would not agree, otherwise why else would it be …”Kadam taule Krishna Naache”….. (and thus dances Lord Krishna beneath the Kadam trees)

    

The piece is a part of an effort to garner a little interest for trees………………

meeting "mita".........

Assuming the role of bread earner, dudul entered the world of business, contractual assignments with PWD n others.....one of his assignments lead him to lakhimpur, which he was traversing by a night bus from guwahati. Kamal Das another contractor with the PWD was to accompany him on this particular night travel.....both boarded the bus from paltan bazar in the evening, as the bus approached Maligaon dudul suddenly realised that something was amiss, he let out a cry of anguish - the whisky bottle had been left behind and nothing could be more frightening than this, imagine a 12 hour dry journey it was almost unimaginable for him. Kamalda seated next to him offered him a solution, a "half bottle bagpiper" packed in his briefcase. As they approached the Saraighat bridge, dudul asked him for the bottle - considering the formal status of their relationship kamalda took the precious "half" and handed the same to him. The "half" was thereafter opened and the session in the moving bus was about to commence when realisation dawned that there was no water for the mixing n the next stoppage then was mangaldoi which by "whisky craving" standards seemed eons away! dudul has an immediate solution - if there is no water have it raw, "but how" asked kamalda, " oh its very easy" said the master - " just fill your mouth with saliva, take a whisky sip and gulp it down - as simple as abc". Kamalda was utterly disgusted, he would never attempt that so he refused and said that he would take some once they get water at mangaldoi. Several kms into the journey, the "half" turned into "quarter" n then into "half a quarter"....the situation was getting out of hand for poor kamalda, he knew that it was now or never - the "half a quarter" was thereafter snatched out of dudul's ownership and the remaining "half of the quarter" was gulped down by kamalda in the raw n even without the saliva accompaniment.........henceforth the date with raw whisky paved the way for a life long friendship! they became "mita" to each other.

"mita" is an assamese word describing your best man n best friend.

ziko.....

he was his fathers pet n his pet was ziko....ziko incidently was a baby bear. Ziko would go everywhere that dudul went, rode the bike with him, had mock fights, threw tantrums, climbed the coconut tree outside his house to pluck coconuts for his ma. He stayed in a shed at one end of the courtyard at night.....they literally grew up together. The neighbourhood at first was terrified of Ziko and inturn of his owner lest he let Ziko upon them, but with the passage of time Ziko became an integral part of the neighbourhood, he was loved by all for his antics which surpassed that of his master.......one fine morning Ziko followed his master n friend to the shops at Fancy Bazar, people ran amock while both enjoyed the attention garnered.....dudul entered the "golden hawn" restaurant and ordered soup, a bowl each for him and Ziko. The restaurant owner was furious and threw them out on the streets with an order saying "entry for animals prohibited". The restaurant owner justified that he maintained certain standards, which had been relegated by the entry of an animal in to its premises. Dudul came back home with Ziko, left him there, went to Lakhtokia n gathered a group of street children  all dirty, smelly and with dripping noses and took all seven of them to the "golden hawn" and fed them to their gilts while making them feel at home all over the self acclaimed posh restaurant........the owner stood silently and watched from a corner, these were not animals after all.....

can help fallin in love with u.....

i fell in love with him even before i met him........i sold my soul n bought his love and lived life thereafter.....

our meeting was in the most ordinary manner possible, he was my 75 year old proffessor's friend n i was 28 then. "unpredictable is the only word for him" said my prof, "i still remember a conference of elephant handlers that was held in the winter months at jaldapara wildlife sanctuary, we were all delivering lectures n talks on the nuances of elephant handing, my friend's turn was next n he was untraceable, we searched the entire venue but in vain, his talk was delivered by another forest official, after half hour we found him behind the elephant pilkana in the mahouts tents with a beer bottle and seven to eight mahouts as audience delivering the lecture on elephant handling to the people who really mattered....thats my friend dudul chowdhury for you - totally unpredictable but a good heart". This was my first encounter with him and the rest ofcourse is history.....